


Beneath Our Skins

by scribblemyname



Series: Yuletide 2014 [4]
Category: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Genre: Animal Transformation, Betting Pool, Canon Character of Color, Chromatic Yuletide, Ensemble - Freeform, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Misses Clause Challenge, POV Female Character, Rescue, Scenes from Various Missions, Shapeshifting AU, Team Bonding, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 05:49:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2801858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/scribblemyname
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don't ask about someone else's form. It's not done—even when you're in a covert operations organization where your alternate skillset might come seriously in handy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beneath Our Skins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [james](https://archiveofourown.org/users/james/gifts).



> Prompt: I love the four as a family, whether it's platonic or not. I would love a story in a world were animal transformations were the norm, and they're just doing their usual thing but sometimes turning into wolves or something.
> 
> So much thanks to my beta, r_lee.

They were on the roof of a building and their target snatched up the remote for his device and flung it off.

Jane's muscles contracted, her voicebox shifted, and all her nerve endings tensed with fiery pain as her hand clawed after the remote. She almost threw herself over the edge in a blur of shifting muscle and tendon and bone, but she _didn’t_. If the target couldn’t use the remote, the job was done anyway. Besides, you didn’t change on a job. You didn’t let that kind of intel get out about yourself—ever.

Her body stopped trying to melt into another form and snapped back to human as she hit the rooftop with a grunt. Her comm spat and sputtered as Ethan ordered Brandt to get the remote from below if he could.

Benji better get the device, Jane thought viciously to herself. Even without the remote, it was dangerous, and now they couldn't remote self-destruct it before it could be used for whatever it was it did. (Intel was short on what damage it would cause, only that it had the power to take out an entire small city.)

Jane snatched up her gun and stood over the target. He smirked at her and she slammed the butt over the back of his head.

"Target neutralized."

* * *

You don't ask about someone else's form. It's not done—even when you're in a covert operations organization where your alternate skillset might seriously come in handy. She waited until they were in a comfortable safehouse waiting for their next mission to bring up the subject.

"Secret sharing?" Jane asked, waving the beer bottles in her hands as a peace offering.

Ethan glanced over and shrugged but kept working on cleaning out his gear.

Jane made a face and turned to Brandt, who was grimacing thoughtfully, and Benji, who was staring blankly.

"Secrets?" Benji asked.

"Uh-huh. Skillsets." Jane sat down on the ottoman and scooted closer to the coffee table where she deposited the alcohol. "I know it's not done, but I could have seriously done something with that wrinkle on the last job if we were being more open."

"Then you do it," Brandt protested. "That's how people find out. You just do it."

"Do what?" Benji looked between them. "Oh, _change!_ Well, of course, you could…just…do it. I guess. Wait, have _you_ done that?" he asked Brandt.

Brandt scrubbed his face with a hand. "Yes."

"So your other team knew?" Jane looked hopeful. She noticed Ethan was paying attention now, not that she expected him to join in this euphemistic, all around the rosebush discussion of a civilian taboo. They weren't civilians, so Jane thought it was crippling to keep it all under wraps. Who could blame her?

But Brandt just shook his head. "No. I did what I had to do, and it didn't work." His eyes slid to the right to take Ethan into his gaze.

Those two knew something the rest of them didn't and seemed to share an understanding about their past history Jane and Benji hadn't watched them reach.

She leaned forward and plucked a bottle from the table. "I saved my brother once. He ran out in the street for a basketball."

Brandt froze. He knew exactly what she was doing. Benji's mouth worked a couple times, but he seemed to settle after a moment of realizing no one else was saying anything, not even in disapproval.

Ethan stood and walked into the living room between them, grabbing a beer on his way to the armchair where he dropped without a word. He worked open the cap with his teeth, then offered, "I've used it. I don't mind using it in front of you if I need to, but not targets and not strangers."

Jane nodded in understanding. She had heard so many rumors about his form, but she didn't feel comfortable guessing what it was.

"Um, so are we sharing what or just talking around or…?" Benji's question trailed off. He glanced between Jane and Ethan.

Ethan took a long swig. "Be my guest."

Brandt shook his head and grabbed a beer.

Benji and Brandt were both occupying the couch, side by side where they'd moved in with computers and teasing banter earlier. Brandt's tension seemed to bleed through the six or eight inches between them. Benji looked uncertain.

"Eagle," Jane finally blurted, now that Ethan had said okay. She needed to break the silence. She watched Brandt's whole body tense with the knowledge. "It's not a good form for walking, so I tend to change mid-leap."

"Oh. Wow." Benji's eyes were wide. "Powerful. Mine's nothing like that, just... Well, I never really got the hang of it, to be honest. It's a— Don't laugh."

"We won't laugh," Ethan reassured him, though Jane thought she saw the barest hint of a smile.

"It's a rabbit."

Brandt looked at him with a widening grin.

"What? You can't _pick_ what you'll be." Benji leaned back with his beer. "So what about you?"

"I abstain." Brandt swallowed down another gulp of his drink.

Jane swallowed down her disappointment. "Would you change in front of us if it would help the mission?"

He looked at her with an odd expression, as if he were wondering something very hard. "Sure." He shrugged one shoulder. "Maybe."

The second sounded more likely, and more genuine, than the first.

She shot him a tight smile of gratitude for that answer, at least. They weren't civilians. It's not like they were friends yet.

* * *

They _used_ to be friends, for all of the one hour they gathered in the little outdoor restaurant before Ethan asked them to do another mission with him and be his new team. They had laughed and joked and reminisced. She remembered the alcohol that went down when Brandt had shared his own secrets, his own guilt about Julia. There had been something there then too, something genuine.

"Hey," she asked him as they geared up on the way out of the van on their next assignment.

Brandt paused beside her.

"Should I keep calling you Brandt?" He'd never actually given her permission to call him something else, and she needed that camaraderie of teamwork back again.

"Will."

Then they were out the door with all the practicality of field agents. It wasn't until later when they were celebrating another day saved, another job done, that Ethan stopped them all laughing and talking and teasing Benji for blushing when he was trying to flirt his way into a server room.

"Will, is it?" Ethan looked between the two of them.

Will shrugged his easy way that never gave away how comfortable or uncomfortable he really was (though his tone usually did). "That is my name. _Ethan."_

"Right. Yeah." Ethan kept looking for a long moment, long enough for Jane to sigh in exasperation and point out that, "You could have asked him months ago."

"Yeah, yeah, fine." Ethan let it drop. No one else picked it up.

* * *

"Benji! You need to disappear," Ethan's voice ordered over the comm.

"Right. Got it. I think that'll take out my comm," Benji's voice came back, crystal clear because Jane wasn't halfway into changing.

She saw what Ethan was seeing, the cadre of security agents heading her teammate's way and backed him up with, "Just do it, Benji."

Sputtering, then sudden silence.

When the small but fast brown rabbit hopped into the van, Will cursed in surprise, but then scooped him up and set him on the seat while Jane started driving.

"We got him, Ethan," she heard Will report.

* * *

Whoever thought Will was a stick in the mud had never gone drinking with him. Alcohol didn't loosen his tongue, but he generally chose to drink before loosening it himself.

"Why didn't you grab Ethan that way, when he fell?"

Jane smoothed back her hair out of her eyes to get a better look at him when he asked. His eyes were bright, but he didn't seem too drunk at all. Just asking and she'd never thought he would wonder.

"We caught him." She shrugged, then smiled. "No need to do anything different."

He nodded and took another swig, but the feeling that he knew she was holding back on him swirled hotly in her gut—and she was. There was a taloned hunter lurking under her skin and she'd wanted to hunt, to kill when she'd handled Moreau. It was just too soon to turn that creature loose on her own team. She’d grabbed with human hands because she'd been trying to take care of them, and the desire to shift had sunk down into nothingness inside, as sour as bile.

* * *

Benji and Will had a betting pool and they cut her in when she realized what they were doing.

"He's been changing the whole time," Will commented wryly as she read over Benji's printout of comms data. "He's just really good at not doing it in front of us."

"Do you think he's trying not to let us see?" Benji asked.

Jane snorted. "I wouldn't put it past him. Fifty on he's playing us because it's fun."

"I think it hasn't come up," Will countered, "you know, where it's us but no one else."

"How much you got on that?" she asked.

Benji answered, holding out the hat for her money. "He's bet twenty-five on that part and thirty that it's something small. I think he's a predator."

Jane raised her eyebrows and considered the man who'd talked to her gently about how to deal with men and how to deal with the one she'd lost. "I doubt it."

Will seemed to read her slide toward darker thoughts and ordered boisterously, "Money where your mouth is. Not a predator, how much?"

She rolled her eyes and dropped in twenty. "Something known for survival."

Will grinned at her. "Nice."

* * *

It was Will hanging out of a building this time, panicked rambling on the comms, gripping tightly with hands threatening to turn sweaty and G—, couldn't _somebody_ do something because he couldn't hold on much longer and…

She changed.

Bones cracked, muscle shifted, flesh melted her comm and clothes into feathers and an eagle's cry as she flew toward him, talons extended.

Will didn't do well with heights and she could smell the stink of his fear as she snatched him up, tearing his clothes but holding him tightly by the arms. She was larger than any other eagle she'd seen before and it wasn't too hard to hold onto him and break their sharp descent despite his weight.

When she dropped him a few feet from the dirt, he crumpled to the ground, dealing with the shock of it. He took ragged gulps of air and struggled to pull his body back from its adrenaline freefall. She didn't stop because she needed to get away before she compromised herself, but she was pleased when she saw him wave her off as if he too understood.

* * *

"Thanks," he murmured in her ear later when no one was listening or watching. They were passing each other at the buffet line in a restaurant.

Then he was back with the others at their table, and she wondered if she'd just imagined that maybe he'd forgiven her for not telling him the truth about Dubai.

* * *

"A rat?" Benji demanded. "You can't be serious." He sputtered for a few minutes as Will just laughed at him.

Jane counted out her winnings gleefully.

Ethan came in from the bathroom and stared at the three of them spread out all over the hotel room—Will still laughing so hard it seemed they had never heard him _really_ laugh, Benji's face in his hands as he bemoaned having bet so much, and Jane waving a fistful of cash with a grin.

"What'd I miss?"

Will turned the computer around and nudged it toward Ethan. They had successfully comandeered the security camera footage of his entrance into a closed museum in his alternate form.

"I see." Ethan shook his head at them all. "You were _betting_ on it?"

Jane perked up. "Were you hiding it on purpose?"

He narrowed his eyes suspiciously, then lifted a finger. "I'm not telling you that."

All three of them groaned in unison.

"But I could make back my losses," Benji pointed out pleadingly—in vain.

* * *

"You're just as bad as he is," Jane told him, applying her elbow to his rib cage.

Will just shrugged. "Never implied otherwise. You can bet on it if you like."

She tried not to, but she could feel herself start to smile.

* * *

Getting back to work after the holidays felt a lot like getting back home. Jane missed the team when she was eating turkey and Christmas pies. She missed Benji's casual genius and amiable susceptibility to teasing. She missed Will's wry, self-deprecating humor, his snark, and his almost anal-retentive adherence to rules and probabilities. She missed Ethan's knack for listening and his easy comfort with the lot of them when they got personal.

She got the call between dinner and dessert the day after Christmas and said goodbye before the pie hit the table.

* * *

"What were you told?" Ethan asked her as she climbed in the back of the private plane.

"Will was on some sort of solo assignment and needs extraction." She belted herself in and met his worried gaze. "How bad is it?"

"We don't know." Ethan shook his head. "They pulled his comms before he could go off them."

They didn't know and Benji was, remarkably, the calmest of all of them. "He'll be all right. He's a trained agent and he was fully prepared for possible capture when they sent him in."

Of course, it didn't reassure Jane in the least, but the thought was nice. Inside her a hunter seethed, and she wanted to destroy everyone who had thought to take another teammate away. Not again. One was all fate was going to get.

They were heading to a small enough town in South America, at the back of beyond, and IMF suspected Will was being held at an outpost beyond even that. They dropped in as close as they could and hiked their way cautiously the remaining eight miles.

The first thing Jane thought was that they hadn't gotten there in time.

The bodies of the terrorists were strewn over the clearing, one halfway into a cobra form and another all the way into a jaguar. The remaining three were human, but all were bloody and dead. In the back of the site, pressed against a wall and snarling, was the largest grey wolf Jane had ever seen. His hackles were raised and she wondered if they even could call the human back out in him.

"Cover me." She dropped to her knees in the midst of the carnage and held out her hand, waiting patiently as she murmured every simple comfort phrase she had in a gentle tone and mixed it in with his name, Will, over and over.

Ethan and Benji covered her, solemn and quiet. It had happened before, a human going wild because he went too deep into his other form and the instincts that went with it.

But eventually, the wolf stopped snarling and whined, then looked at her again. Something lucid started to flicker behind his eyes.

She ached just a little as she thought of what it would mean to him, coming back to himself surrounded by this bloodshed. He was a gentler personality than he let on sometimes.

He moved toward her, sniffing cautiously, then loped over. Ethan raised his gun warily until he was sure the action was innocent. The wolf’s head rested in Jane’s lap and she put her arms around him, uncaring of the blood, and held on for dear life.

"I was so worried," she told him. "Don't ever do that to me again."

He was trembling in her arms but stayed put.

Ethan stepped forward, gun back in its holster, and patted the wolf's back. "Let's get him out of here."

* * *

It took days in the military hospital before the wolf became Will again. He was treated for shock and injuries put down to torture. Both vet and doctor seemed pleased with the quick recovery period. The rest of his team were not so optimistic, not with the way he'd pulled into himself, quiet and brooding.

"Don't you dare go back to analysis," Jane hissed at him the first night he was human from where she'd curled up in the hospital chair for her shift.

He blinked at her in surprise but said nothing.

Benji told him in the morning how much money he'd lost thinking there was no way Will could be a wolf or a cat or anything with claws like that. "It's indecent is what it is."

Ethan alternated between his silent vigil and telling stories funny enough to bring out Will's dry chuckle in spite of himself.

He was released at the end of three weeks with the promise he'd treat his recovery at home seriously.

* * *

"Home," Ethan reminded him when Will appeared in the doorway of the safehouse.

Will winced when he bumped his arm on the door but continued on in and dropped down on the couch next to Jane. "What are you talking about Ethan? I am home."

Ethan stared at him. Benji laughed. Jane looped her arm through his.

"Finally," she said.


End file.
